That is a marked improvement and very encouraging. It looks more like software that I could actually use.

But given all the care that has gone into Dorico, I don't understand why its default settings are so out of whack. Along with the problems that you have corrected:

1. the accidentals and note heads are too close together
2. the tips of the slurs seem to point toward the outer edges of the note heads so they look more like slurs than ties
3. the expressions are too large
4. the piano bracket is too close to the left bar line

Even though I prefer a lighter look than what Dorico and Bravura represents by default, I am surprised by the strong objections to the default settings of Dorico. It is meant to resemble printed plate engraved music and I personally think it does so quite well.

It's also set up to allow as much music on each system as possible, which is why accidentals and notes appear too close in certain types of music if left as is. By comparison, Finale's accidental spacing can become quite unpleasant in tight spacing situations.

The ties, while not ideally tapered, are set up to resemble the Henle et al. style placement at the centre of the notehead (i.e., the same horizontal placement as slurs). I don't see them generally pointing towards the outer edges of the noteheads in Dorico, but in certain cases it's likely that this placement style will give such an impression. Avoiding this entirely would require an algorithm based on the angle of the curve, as opposed to a fixed value. I personally prefer placement in accordance with Ted Ross, so that the endpoints of slurs and ties are not horizontally alligned, but this is clearly a matter of taste.

The size of expressions are indeed a bit large. They are set up to have approximately the same x-hight as the dynamics, but should be somewhat smaller.

The placement of the piano brace is also wrong. Since this is actually a font character, as opposed to the score brackets, I suspect the developers haven't gotten around to implement proper placement for that particular item, so that it's value is currently set to 0.

John Ruggero wrote:That is a marked improvement and very encouraging. It looks more like software that I could actually use.

But given all the care that has gone into Dorico, I don't understand why its default settings are so out of whack. Along with the problems that you have corrected:

1. the accidentals and note heads are too close together
2. the tips of the slurs seem to point toward the outer edges of the note heads so they look more like slurs than ties
3. the expressions are too large
4. the piano bracket is too close to the left bar line

And one expects to encounter many more of these problems. Why?

1 and 2 can be fixed easily in the defaults, with separate accidental distances for sharp, natural and flat, with the ties coming from the inner edges of the noteheads.

I believe 3 can be fixed by adjusting the font size but I cannot seem to figure out which font it is.

At the moment, there seems to be no way of fixing #4.

Edit: I found out which font setting makes the dynamics smaller but it also seems to make other things smaller, like key signatures, which is undesirable.

Knut wrote:It's also set up to allow as much music on each system as possible, which is why accidentals and notes appear too close in certain types of music if left as is. By comparison, Finale's accidental spacing can become quite unpleasant in tight spacing situations.

The Finale engraved Nocturne in question has the same number of measures on the first page as the Dorico (see attachement ).As you can see, Finale's spacing (image right) is much better, so I don't think it's just a question allowing more music per system. Measure 8 (not pictured) is wider in Dorico. I think the kerning is off. I tried to fix it but I couldn't find the kerning adjustments needed.

Knut wrote:It's also set up to allow as much music on each system as possible, which is why accidentals and notes appear too close in certain types of music if left as is. By comparison, Finale's accidental spacing can become quite unpleasant in tight spacing situations.

The Finale engraved Nocturne in question has the same number of measures on the first page as the Dorico (see attachement ).As you can see, Finale's spacing (image right) is much better, so I don't think it's just a question allowing more music per system. Measure 8 (not pictured) is wider in Dorico. I think the kerning is off. I tried to fix it but I couldn't find the kerning adjustments needed.

NicholasG would you mind sharing your dorico file? It would be easier if I could compare and try things, I only had time to enter the first system.

OK, here is the full first page of NicholasG's notation, with my settings tweaks applied. I increased the accidental spacing as well.

I had to decrease the tie height adjustment for short ties back to the default, because then the really short ties in the right hand in the bottom system looked stupidly tall.

I think the problem in m. 7 is that Dorico doesn't detect the collision in m. 7 between the top of the natural sign in the right hand of beat 2 and the bottom ledger line of the preceding note. Actually when you look at that inside Dorico, there is a clear space there, but when it is rendered to PDF, the space becomes smaller as to cause a collision that isn't there on screen.

If you look in the program window itself, at 150% zoom, there is a gap there that is missing from the PDF - screenshot below:

That's probably a bug. I think it's failing to take the anti-aliasing into account, either that or the PDF render is off. Either way, I suspect if it realized the accidental was colliding, it would create extra space.

Update: Was able to fix the spacing in m. 7 by increasing the "minimum distance between adjacent rhythmic items" to 2 1/2 spaces, under Engraving Options->Spacing Gaps (the bottommost setting). I don't know if this will have a bad effect somewhere else.

I do not understand why, in the earlier Dorico versions of measure 7, the 5th and 7th 16th-notes are kerned under the preceding notehead, but not the 3rd 16th-note. That makes the spacing look very irregular.

erelievonen wrote:I do not understand why, in the earlier Dorico versions of measure 7, the 5th and 7th 16th-notes are kerned under the preceding notehead, but not the 3rd 16th-note. That makes the spacing look very irregular.

I think I can explain why this is happening. I believe Dorico is trying to avoid collisions between accidentals and ledger lines of directly preceding notes. It sees that the natural symbol on the third 16th is going to collide with the second sixteenth note's ledger line and so it pushes the third sixteenth note over horizontally. However, it does NOT detect a collision between the accidentals before the 5th and 7th sixteenth notes, it thinks there is enough vertical space between the symbol and the preceding ledger line, so it sticks the accidental under the ledger line rather than moving the note to the right like it does with the third sixteenth.

That is certainly an issue because in the PDF version, it appears to be a collision, at least it is so close that it looks like a collision. There should be some way of adjusting the 'margin' around either the accidental or the ledger line (to leave a bit of extra space for cases like this where there is technically enough space but to the eye there is a collision) but it doesn't appear there is yet.